


Three Roads, One Line

by elysiumwaits



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Clint Barton Feels, Established Relationship, Hopeful Ending, Laura Barton-centric, Missing Scene, Multi, POV Laura Barton, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: Clint has been compromised by a god, James is in the middle of it, and Laura just wants both of her boys to come home safe.--They have contingency plans upon contingency plans, and none of them were ever made for this."I need to talk to James," Laura says, and tries to keep her voice as steady as she can when she feels a tug on her pant leg. She reaches down and runs her shaking fingers through Lila's hair.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton/Laura Barton
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33
Collections: Holly Poly 2019





	Three Roads, One Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



> I originally had a different idea for this, but it just wouldn't stick where I wanted it to. And then I slept on it and this idea sprouted, where Bucky's been around since the very beginning of the Avengers, due to hand-wavy reasons. I kind of want to examine this premise more - I just really liked this idea of a missing scene at the end of The Avengers, and that's what came out more than anything. Originally this was supposed to be about Laura finding the Winter Soldier in their barn, but I just couldn't get it to go where I wanted it to, so I gave in and started doing what my brain wanted me to do. You very well may see a companion piece to this later on.
> 
> I hope this is okay! It wound up pretty Clint-centric, given the part of the timeline it's in, but I hope I made it clear just how much everyone cares about everyone else here.
> 
> Title from HAIM's "Hallelujah." 

Natasha's the one who calls her and tells her to get out. It's the first time that something has gone so spectacularly sideways, and Laura's not so removed from her SHIELD days that she doesn't know what "compromised" means anymore. It takes everything she has not to find out if her old tactical gear still fits after two kids, and ultimately it's the sudden, dousing reminder that _she has kids_ that keeps her from reactivating her own clearance and coming out of her conditional retirement.

They have contingency plans upon contingency plans, and none of them were ever made for _this_. 

"I need to talk to James," Laura says, and tries to keep her voice as steady as she can when she feels a tug on her pant leg. She reaches down and runs her shaking fingers through Lila's hair. "Or is he..."

If they're _both_ compromised, if they're both under the control of some alien with a fancy stick... Laura doesn't want to think about it. She's not sure she can.

"He's not," Natasha says quickly, and Laura feels dizzy with that little bit of relief. James and Natasha will get Clint back. "Hold on. He's in a briefing."

It goes unspoken that this conversation is more important, at this moment, than whoever James is talking to. All of the people that Laura can think of will understand, and the list of people that even know about Laura's existence, let alone Cooper's or Lila's, is short. It takes a few minutes where Laura hears nothing on the other end of the line, during which she numbly cradles the phone on her shoulder to fill Lila's sippy cup with more apple juice and open a pack of fruit snacks for Cooper. She runs through a list in her head that's never been written down, thinks about what she's got in the safe upstairs that neither of her boys knows about. 

The contingency plans that she and Clint have put into place are burned right now, because of all the situations they came up with, this was never one of them. Interrogations, yes, torture, yes. Mind control? No. 

There's the beep of a button through the phone, and then the sudden rush of sound - speech that she can't make out in the background, the quiet click of a door closing. "Honey," James says, and Laura braces herself on the back of a kitchen chair. He sounds calm and soothing, not unlike when he's talking to Cooper about not launching himself off the fence or Lila when she topples over because walking is still new to her. "You need to go. Now."

"Where?" Laura asks, watches her knuckles turn white on the wood of the chair. "He knows where all the safehouses are. And my mother's place."

There's a beat where she can hear James thinking. "You have a pen?" he finally says.

Laura knocks mail and shopping lists aside to grab the back of an envelope and one of the pens that's lying on the kitchen table. He gives her an address in Kansas City that she's never been to, and she breathes out a shaky sigh. She's not near tears yet, switching from shock to crisis mode. There will be time to cry later, after everything's done and she knows which way the stones are falling.

"Bring him home, okay? Both of you come home safe," she says. "Give this asshole a good punch in the face from me."

Cooper tugs on her pants again. "Mommy, 's a bad word." Laura pats him, and his words drift kind of around her now that she's already thinking about her next move.

"I'll call you when I can," James replies, and Laura doesn't ask how he plans to do that, because they both know she'll have to leave this phone behind. "I love you. Tell the kids we love them, and that we'll see you guys soon."

 _There will be time to cry later_ , Laura reminds herself fiercely. She can count on one hand how many times James has told her he loves her unprompted. That, more than anything, tells her just how much trouble they're all in. "I will, I love you too," she manages around the lump in her throat. There's a click when the call hangs up, and then Laura and their kids are alone in the middle of Missouri again, supposedly far enough for anything bad to happen. 

She needs to pack. Her stride is assured when she starts up the stairs to grab diaper bags and suitcases, even though her fingers shake as she chooses her mom's number from the contact list on her phone. There will be time to cry later, Laura tells herself as her eyes go blurry when her mom answers. She's got too much to do right now.

They spend four days in Kansas City. It's four long days of Laura biting her nails to the quick and watching the news coverage late into the night instead of sleeping. She gives up on trying not to cry when she first sees the coverage of the aftermath of the battle and an arrow is sticking out of an alien, because she knows that it means that Clint is in New York and Clint is alive and Clint is on the side putting arrows into aliens. 

She doesn't get a call until a few hours later, though, the ringing of the landline in the little house startling her when she hears it coming from the kitchen. It's early in New York and earlier here, but she doesn't care as she answers the phone and drops herself into one of the armchairs in the living room that has her and Clint and the kids written all over it, even though she had no idea that it existed until four days ago. She bets that Clint still doesn't know it exists, thinks that maybe it's a secret now between her and James. Now that mind control is on the table as something that can happen.

It's James again. "We got him back," he says, and Laura's so glad she had the foresight to sit down with the cordless phone, because she's so relieved that she's not sure she could have remained standing.

Laura swallows, and her voice comes rough when she gets it to work. "So you're coming home?"

James sighs, and the noise crackles down the line. He sounds like himself, though, not like James-in-a-crisis and not like the Winter Soldier. He sounds like _James_ , albeit tired James, like he does when he's fresh off a difficult mission. It's not a yes, though, just like it's not a no. "They don't want to let him go until they're sure that Loki's out of his head."

"What does Nat think?" Laura trusts the SHIELD medical team, she does, but she trusts her people a hell of a lot more. If Clint's still compromised in any way, Nat will know better than anyone.

There's a pause, and then James says, "She thinks he's safe."

"What do you think?"

Another pause. "I think it's gonna take a little while to come back from this one," he finally says, quietly, like he's turned into a corner so no one else can hear the vulnerability in his voice. Laura swallows. "It's... we lost people, honey. A lot of people. There's gonna be an investigation, and we have to figure out where the security leaks are. I think he's alone in there again, but I don't know if there's... something Loki left behind."

He would know all about that, Laura thinks. One of James' biggest fears is a recall code. Contingency plans upon contingency plans, sometimes she feels like that's all that makes up their lives. "And what does Clint think?"

"Clint thinks that everything is his fault, and that he's a danger to everything and everyone he loves," James replies, far too quickly for him to have actually asked Clint how he's feeling about anything at all. Laura's pretty sure that Clint doesn't even know James is talking to her right now. He's probably been hiding, as he does. "He's worried about being around the kids right now."

Now _that_ sounds like something Clint would actually say. "Makes sense. He always needs a little bit of time, and this one hit pretty close to home." Laura picks at the fabric of the chair, and then says, "So I'll send the kids with my mom. Bring him home." 

She can hear movement upstairs in one of the three bedrooms. It had felt so strange to walk in and find a house, ready to go for them to hide in, with a bedroom that was very obviously painted with butterflies for Lila and another with glowing stars on the ceiling for Cooper. She can't have the kids walk down and see her crying - they know something is up even if they don't know exactly what it is and can't articulate that they know. Kids are weird like that.

James hasn't said anything, which lets Laura know that he likes the idea enough he's not outright shooting it down in the name of her safety. They've learned a lot over the years, and Laura is a badass in her own right, but she was never what Clint is and can never be what James has been. She knows her boys, though, and knows that if James is holding something back right now, he's not doing it because he thinks it's a danger to her.

"James," she says, pushes back the instinct to use her handler-voice. That's not her life anymore, that's not who Laura is to them. "Bring him home, baby. We'll figure it out from there."

She hears the moment he gives in, with a rush of breath that sounds relieved and frustrated all at once. "Alright. Give us a couple days."

Laura sends Cooper and Lila with her mom, back to the bootheel of Missouri where they're going to spend a week or so running wild with her mom's dogs and splashing in the creeks. She ends up taking the silver Dodge pick-up that's parked in the garage, the one that she found the key to on the hook next to the garage door on the second day. When she looks in the glovebox, it's got updated insurance cards in a name she doesn't know, as well as plates that she screws on with the screwdriver rolling freely in the floorboard.

It's a four-door, and it's got car-seats in the back. One is bright purple with a pink blanket folded neatly in it, and the other is blue with a red blanket. She turns up the radio as she drives so she doesn't have to think about what it means, so she doesn't have to really focus on the evidence of how much they mean to James. She doesn't want to know what he's been preparing for, just in case, and settles for just being grateful for it overall. Contingency plans upon contingency plans.

The drive is over before she realizes it. Kind of makes her think that she shouldn't have driven, considering she doesn't recall much of the last four and a half hours, just a weird blur from starting the truck to pulling into her own long gravel driveway as the sun is setting. The horses have already been brought in, and Laura makes a mental note to send a thank you over to the neighbors down the road for taking care of them the past week. As far as priorities go, though, that's pretty low, and she knows that they'll understand even if they don't know why she had to leave so suddenly.

The farmhouse is dark and quiet when she gets the door unlocked. Laura sets her bag down and flips on the living room light, and then the porch light. She can't just sit and wait, even as much as she wants to just park herself in the porch swing and wallow in her own fear and anxiety for a little while. So instead, she takes the time to clean up from when she'd hustled the kids out so quickly only a week earlier. She throws the sippy cup and dishes from that breakfast to soak in the sink, picks up toys and clothes from the floor, and takes the trash out to toss into the back of the truck to drive it down to the dumpster later. It's busy work more than anything - Laura could care less about possums and raccoons getting into her trash tonight.

And then, sometime between folding the first load of laundry and pouring herself yet another cup of coffee far too late in the day, she hears the sound of an engine and tires on gravel. Laura very carefully sets her coffee down on the kitchen counter and makes her way through the living room and out to the porch, the screen door closing behind her just as the engine and the headlights to the old blue truck cut off. 

She's not wearing shoes, so she doesn't go running down the steps and the driveway like she wants to. Instead, she wraps the flannel shirt she's wearing a little tighter around herself and waits, as two sets of boots hit the gravel and the doors of the truck close. She sees James first, from the driver's side, and then Clint, from the passenger's side. She watches as he visibly squares his shoulders and hesitates at the front of the truck before James murmurs something to him. 

A few more steps, and then her boys are _home_ , Clint pausing at the top of the porch steps with James behind him. She knows that look on his face, even only ever having seen it once before, when he was three months late thanks to being held against his will in some country that even she didn't have the clearance to know back when she was active. He's got dark circles under his eyes, haunted shadows on his face, and Laura understands that, wants to crawl in bed with both of them and just sleep for a week.

"Hey, baby," she says, smiles because she's happy to see him safe, if not whole just yet. "I'm so glad you're home." Her voice sticks on the words, thick in her throat, and she swallows.

So much for holding it together, though. "Oh, honey," Clint says, and Laura closes her eyes and shakes out the sleeve of the shirt to cover her face with as the whole week crashed in on her at once. His protective instincts win out over the instinct to run, just like they always do, and she ends up with his arms around her, the warmth of his shoulder solid against her cheek. "Laura, it's okay. I'm okay." 

Laura gets one hand gripped in the back of his t-shirt, and holds her other one out behind him expectantly until she feels James' hand close over hers. She doesn't cry - or at least, she doesn't have a come-apart, just kind of clings to them both, and lets Clint's shirt soak up the tears that do fall. Finally she pulls her face and her hands back, and wipes her cheeks with her shirt while Clint presses a long kiss to her forehead. 

"Come on, boys," she finally manages to say in a voice that isn't steady enough yet and probably won't be for a couple of days. "Come inside, I'm... I'm just so glad you're both home safe."

There will be time later, Laura knows, to break down like she wants to, like she needs to. Like they all need to. Later, Clint will take a shower, and Laura will take ten minutes to cling to James with a desperation and a grief at what could have been that she knows he shares. Later, James will fall asleep for the first time in days, sprawled out on their bed, and Laura will soothe her hand down Clint's back and remind him that none of it was his fault. Tomorrow, the sun will rise, and she'll sleep in later than usual and wake up to James making breakfast while Clint works on his second cup of coffee and tries his best to look awake. One step toward normal, the next toward healing. 

Right now, though, Laura opens the screen door, leaning up to kiss Clint's cheek as he passes. She stands on her toes to press her lips to James' cheek as he passes too, and then pulls the screen door closed tight behind her when she follows them through. Her boys are home, and sometimes, at the end of a mission, that's all she can ask for. The rest will come with time, and the world can wait.


End file.
